How internet is magnifying branding strategy?
The Internet is magnifying the effects of business intermediaries, the action of interpretation of brands, and the relationship between image and identity. The outcome is that there is more noise, and brands are moderated and mediated more, both by and through the use of the new communication mechanism that is the Internet. In consequence there is a changing relationship between brand image and brand identity, and brand identity and brand reality; customer being a moderating factor.
Brand reality is defined as “…organizing branding so that employees are uniquely proud of the company’s brand leadership and [are] passionately aligned to branding this through activities they work on individually, and in teams…”. The concept of brand reality has a particular significance in the context of the increased communication power facilitated by the Internet.
Consistency in brand communications is important in building and maintaining a strong brand image, but often the ultimate presentation of a brand to customers at the point of purchase is in the control of a retailer domain rather than the manufacturer or brand owner, whether that be on-line or bricks-and-mortar.
Buchanan, Simmons and Bickart found that “context can create conditions in which customers are likely to rely less on previously formed attitudes and more on external cues. Despite the extensive marketing efforts involved in maintaining a high-equity brand’s positioning, retailers are able to negate the equity of an established brand through their display decisions. This deterioration of brand equity has obvious implications for the brand in the long run, but it may even influence profitability in the short run”.
This erosion of brand profitability is a result of retailers leveraging the value of a high-equity brand to create sales for other brands carried in the store as well as for the brand itself; an unwelcome brand linkage from the point of view of the manufacturer but intentional on the part of the retailer.
For a variety of reasons – business activity on the Internet with its increased communication between consumers, the rise of brand extension, co-branding, the increasing importance of brand association and other associative effects – brand constellations are emerging, which further increase the complex relationships between brands and also increase the interference of brand noise through their various structures and intermediaries. In an attempt to conceptualize this, taxonomy of brand linkages is proposed.
